"There can be no apology for some of Ashley's decisions. He picked out-of-touch managers Kevin Keegan and Joe Kinnear, and his decision to appoint Dennis Wise as executive director of football was a complete disaster.
"But I have sympathy with him because, unlike a lot of big-time owners, Ashley did not stick his nose in and interfere. All he did was bring in who he thought were football people and trusted them to do the right thing. It is their fault, not his, that they wasted millions of pounds on bad players.
"The irony is that whereas most owners are arrogant enough to come into football and think they know it all, Ashley has been naive. He has acknowledged his lack of experience in the game and given his employees a free rein.
"Wise, his cohort Tony Jimenez and Kinnear were all out of their depth and that is why the club are in such a mess.
"When things started to get desperate in January, it seems the club started to listen a little less to Wise, and more to Kinnear.
"But the result was the same - more of the wrong type of player. Nolan lacks mobility in an important area of the pitch, just what Newcastle didn't need!
"Peter Lovenkrands was also signed. OK, he didn't cost any money, but that doesn't matter because he simply isn't good enough at Premier League level.
"None of these things were Ashley's fault, beyond the fact that he put the wrong people in the wrong positions and wrongly believed they knew what they were doing.
"The penny may have dropped now. Certainly the appointment of Alan Shearer was the right thing to do, albeit arguably too late."